I have a question for you, dear reader. What factor was the biggest factor that drove your voting decision in the 2012 Alberta election? Did you base your vote on a platform, a leader, a party, a local candidate or was it a combination of two or more factors?

It was nice to see the media punditry declare that Justin Trudeau had passed another “test” of his leadership by winning 2 seats (gaining the former NDP held Olivia Chow seat of Trinity Spadina) and having a nice increase in the Alberta seats (where sadly my colleague Kyle Harrietha just came up a bit short, . . . → Read More: Scott’s DiaTribes: Federal Byelection thoughts/roundup

Big news out of Northern Alberta, where on Saturday evening in a contested nomination, my friend Kyle Harrietha was nominated as the Liberal Party of Canada’s candidate for the upcoming by-election in Fort McMurray-Athabasca.

Premier Kathleen Wynne has called byelections for Feb. 13 in Thornhill and Niagara Falls…The riding of Niagara Falls became vacant after Liberal MPP Kim Craitor resigned. Thornhill MPP Peter Shurman stepped down after a very public dispute with PC Leader Tim Hudak.

Hope and Hard Work has become the oft-repeated Liberal mantra under Justin Trudeau. And it can also be used to describe where the Liberals find themselves after Monday’s by-elections: with a little more hope, and a lot more hard work ahead of them. The hope: with significant gains in vote and margin across the board . . . → Read More: A BCer in Toronto: By-elections give Liberals more hope – and a lot more hard work

The media love a good narrative, and once they decide on a narrative they’ll do anything to force events into their box, whether the events fit inside that box. Right now, one of their favourite narratives is that the Liberal Party is dying. Sadly for them, we refuse to go.